Understanding the dynamic properties of soils, i.e., damping and shear modulus, and predicting their behavior under earthquake loading are of paramount importance. The damping ratio is a significant parameter in design and is relatively difficult to predict. It often requires following tedious procedures and solving equations with many unknown factors to determine the damping behavior. In this paper, current models and approaches to predict material damping are briefly summarized. A general equation to predict the material damping of clay, utilizing Amir-Faryar et al. 2016's universal damping model, is proposed as a function of the plasticity index of clay. The general equation will be useful for design engineers in predicting the damping behaviors of cohesive soils for their site response analysis, when the only known property for the clay is the plasticity index. A simplified damping model form characterized by three coefficients was derived from the general equation for clay to predict the material damping.
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